Working For The Weekend
by Spawn Guy
Summary: Anybody else think being an Avenger sounded cooler in the abstract?


I broke my hand lately.

Kind of.

That annoys me, it really does because…well it's not a broken hand, it's just a sprained wrist. I can use it with a minimal amount of pain, but what I do requires use of this hand (My right) a lot. It's the one I write with and it's always, _always_ the first one I use for web slinging.

Of course I really shouldn't be this annoyed. Like I've ever been able to keep Spider-Man from sliding out of my life and back in again, usually with some crap like this, or symbiotes, or clones or guys with lions on their shirts and lightning bolts in their fingers. Along with just generally messing with my personal life, not in the same way an ex college professor cloning me and my dead girlfriend and coming back as part of my dead arch nemesis's elaborate soul shattering plot to achieve vengeance for the death of his son but close enough, they way I broke it is just pathetic.

I slipped on Tony's window sill sneaking back into the tower and landed on it.

And it's November, and it's cold and while it dosen't hurt, it stings. And that's just typical.

Know what else is typical?

---

Jessica slams down about a mile away from me, tumbling to the foot of car, almost cracking her head off the tire of a mini van just in front of her. I stagger up, slump past some wreckage and manage to jump the rest of the way, landing next to her.

"Hey, you okay?"

She grunts.

"Huh?"

"_Define_ okay."

"How blurry is the me on the left?"

She snorts and the fact no blood comes out of her nostrils is a good thing. The whole pheromone thing went by pretty quickly, and now she's pretty much tolerating me like a kid brother. Which is weird, because I'm older than her.

"Punk."

"Prude."

On long cold winter nights (Today, basically) I'll probably sit back with MJ and wonder if the insult contest would have continued if Luke hadn't hurtled by over head. Although a little later in the year and his cry of "CHRISTMAS!" would have been really cute and appropriate. Unlike the crater he makes in a tanker sprawled across the freeway.

Here's how it works: every couple of years or so, someone working for the Owl or Hammerhead or Silvermane or someone down the ladder enough to think this is a good, perfectly sane, ordinary idea and then _do _it, does something like this.

In this case it _was_ Hammerhead, and his idea was to build himself a robot. This robot would then be launched at a certain target (we still don't know what it was going to be, or at least _I _don't. Tony found out through Matt at some point while he was figuring out what was going into making the robot, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't going to be a bank. Too many ways they try and hold onto the money, like making it digital or marking it or whatever) and let it handle any cops or superheroes that showed up while his boys would hustle in and out with whatever they were firing robots at.

And, as always, something went wrong with this plan, which was already wrong enough.

See, Hammerhead's a cheap skate when you get right down to it. So his idea since his budget was so low and all (I consider that a point of pride. With Luke, me and occasionally Iron Fist and Moon Knight (if he's not off going all Punisher somewhere), it's actually been a pretty good year for taking down small scale operations trying to take over now that Kingpin's…wherever he's gone.) was to send out a bunch of 'experts' (Steve thinks AIM might be involved, but trade secret? He thinks super secret terrorists are involved in everything. Bombings, crop circles and his team loosing the Super Bowl) to scrape together tried and true evil robot parts to make the thing, since we all know they're all laying on the bottom of the ocean somewhere, and smuggle it into the country on the morning of Operation: This Is Too Stupid Not To Work.

Boomerang is screaming away in absolute terror at the top of this thing, ensnared in a bunch of power cables snaking out of the arm behind the back plating. Yet another sign this wasn't going to work; you send an Australian stereotype to watch over a shipping crate full of killing machine.

So there he is, loaded up with Batman toys he's not even going to use, freezing his ass of and wishing he could snuggle up to a kangaroo or something (Hey, don't judge. Villains need love to) when he gets the call to turn this thing on using his EMP boomerang.

(I want an EMP boomerang.)

I overheard this along with Jess and Luke in over the quinjet police scanner. Apparently whatever was going on last night worried Cap and Tony enough that we used a multi million dollar aircrafts highly sophisticated, Wakandan Vibranium laced super scanner to listen in on B-listers cell phone conversations. Both Cap and Tony were dealing with something in Seattle (What the hell is out there in Seattle for a Super Soldier and superhero futurist?) and wouldn't be able to make it until three hours (I don't know how that's possible) so we had to step in a stop Boomerang from doing something that was probably very stupid.

We were five seconds off, leaping out of the jet to land on him (Luke tagged him, I just looked cool and Jessica was the only one who knew how to land the thing in hover mode) and the little runt's gizmo kicked in as he was trying to clear up his head, throwing acid boomerangs at Luke.

At which point the machine (Codename, I kid you not, 'Jackhammer') comes online and tries to fulfil it's original programming. Or programm_ings_.

See, Jackhammer is cobbled together from different evil robots. There's an Ultron's head and chest plate, several Doombot arms and head next to Ultron's, and the rest is Ultimo. I think whatever I don't recognise may be left over Deathlock tech, but that'd be gross so I hope not. But the best part? It's got Stiltman's legs.

Anyway, all these machines? Each have their own directive to follow. Ultron wants to fulfil his (or what this drone remembers being his) plans for the complete eradication of the human race, the Doombot (s, depending on how many are in there) wish only to serve the will of Doom, and Ultron's probably out to get Iron Man. Stiltman's legs may or may not want to find and kick Daredevil, I don't know.

Wolverine is somewhere in the middle of it all, slicing and dicing more than Aunt May over a wheat cake, and I think he's laughing his head off in there. Figures. I don't even want to know where he came from.

And this things been tearing up the freeway for the better part of the night. It's almost morning actually, pre dawn.

We should really just call Bob in for this kind of crap. I have papers to grade, for God's sake. No man should spend his last few days before the sweet mercy of winter break like this.

Not that I'm not earning my keep. There are still strands of webbing deteriorating away from hours ago around Jackhammer's shoulders, and the entire time I've been bringing you up to speed I've spent yanking tourists, cops and late night party goers out of the way of his steady wading through abandoned cars. Morning commutes going to be hell. Thank God for web shooters, organic or otherwise.

Luke (He ditched the jacket, but _still_ smells like a gas station), lets out this manly yell that totally outdoes any kind of manly yelling I've ever done as he tosses not one, but two cars into the hole in Jackhammer's chest (Logan's always trying to be bad ass with his healing factor, so he can take it and shut up). The double explosion turns the reddening sky orange, but once the smoke clears all that's left is a snarling Wolverine trying to pull his arm free of a stake of metal about the size of a leg, a still screaming Boomerang now dangling from the thing's lower back, and the Doombot head swaying in the wind. Jackhammer's still coming. I think I can guess why.

"So, have we totally dismissed the It's After Hammerhead theory?"

Luke cracks his knuckles like all tough guys do, readying for another charge and pound at the crotch session, because the last one five minutes ago worked _so_ well.

"Pretty much."

"Not like we have any other ideas."

"It's a robot. We don't need ideas."

"It'd be better than nothing."

"Whole lotta nothing."

"GONNA FRIGGIN' HELP OR NOT!?" Wolverine bellows from somewhere inside the advancing Jackhammer. Boomerang simply continues screaming. Both are ignored.

"You saw the way it freaked when he tried to turn it off with that car key thing. And his getaway car took this route before it disappeared."

Jessica shakes her head.

"No, it turned off a while ago. I saw it from the air. This things been taking a straight line for the last five hours. I think this is what Cap and Iron Man were freaking about."

"And what's that exactly?"

Can't blame Luke for being bitter, Tony and Steve have pretty much been doing their own thing as official Avengers and us newbies have just been along for the ride. They know what their doing at this scale, but still, not cool. We've been doing this for years one way or another.

So we should probably stop bitching about it and start.

I tap Luke's shoulder, pointing at something I just noticed. Every third step the left Stiltman leg slows down and shudders slightly, exposing a knot of wires and servos from the ankle. The upper body sways before coming down with enough force and momentum to swing the other leg up and carry the weight on that before bringing the other one down again, exposing the same flaw. We trip this thing, we finish it.

"You see what I see?"

"Yeah."

"You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Oh yeah."

Jessica smiles for the first real time all night. It's the kind of smile Bruce Banner would back away from inside that gamma green tank.

"I call dibs."

"We'll I ain't getting the hairball out."

They both look at me, but I already have my hands up.

"It was my idea and he has a healing factor. Given the fact he hasn't shown up for eleven out of ten of our missions so far, I say one for all."

Jessica's already in the air by the time I've finished.

"Fair enough."

Luke cracks his knuckles as I crouch, ready to spring.

"Let's disassemble."

Good one.

We're not that good at organizing without a care taker yet, so it's kind of a free for all to see who can get to this thing first, but we know how to handle ourselves in a brawl and so far the fact our fighting styles are so different has seen us through most of them.

Luke manages to make Jackhammer fall on it's butt with a street light club, but gets kicked into the cab of a semi backed up a mile away by the left foot, which I find ironic.

Jess's venom blasts come close to blowing the foot out with sniper accuracy , but she's having to watch out for pot shots from the Doombot gauntlets, so she's inches off.

Me, I've decided to go for Boomerang. This thing falls the wrong way, he's koala food.

I slip under a clawing arm, ignoring the jabbering of a spider trying to make a nest in

Jackhammer's right thigh ( I don't know how Hank Pym put up with this shit) and cling to the shredded remains of the chest, hanging onto what's technically this thing's collar bone.

"Doing ok Logan?"

"GONNAASARFARGHANNAH!"

He's doing okay.

Boomerang's stopped screaming by the time I manage to slip around the side of this thing and pull apart those cables, but I think he just passed out. One of the arms tries to snag me, but Logan makes a complicated gesture with his free arm and drives his claws through it's palm with a sound like elastic snapping under a landslide. Or maybe that's _his _arm. Either way I owe him one. I web one of the heads and yank it back, buying Jessica enough time to zap it in the eye and tail spin out of the barrage of crap this thing was trying to hit her with, before letting go and dropping to the asphalt with Boomerang over my shoulder, trying not to slip on the ice as I land.

I look behind me to make sure this thing isn't going to fall on us or something, suddenly aware that I'm very tired, but it's too busy swatting at a jabbing Luke, jerking as Wolverine rams a boot into it's sparking navel, his mask seemingly burnt away in the five seconds it took me to get down here.

Lights flicker on in apartment windows. A few commuters trying to beat the rush gawk at us from behind their windshields. Sirens are ringing, as ever, from far away. Around us New York is waking up and realising there's a killer robot tearing up 6th and Main.

I back up to avoid a direct kick to the ass as Jackhammer takes a step back, trying to look over my shoulder at Boomerang without dropping him.

"Earth to Boomer."

"M'mmy?"

"Close enough, but nowhere near as disappointed in you."

Spider Sense flares but I'm too busy stupidly turning around to see what the danger is to avoid Luke slamming into the small of my back and sending the three of us rolling across the ground in a jumble of arms and bruised ribs. We just lay there stunned for about thirty seconds, the sound of Logan snarling and the screeching, burning honey scent and sound of Jessica's blasts echoing over Jackhammer's constant steel pounding.

I feel the lump of my tongue in my mouth and see if it works.

"You ain't heavy…"

"_Do not _finish that sentence."

I roll out from under the tree stump that is Luke's leg and try to stand. My wrist screams at me as it slides a little on the ice, and I grit my teeth under the mask, which just hurts even more.

"Thinking about turning in my membership card."

"Not up for a fastball special then?"

Is he kidding? Wait…

"Is that how Logan got up there?"

Luke stiffens, then shrugs.

"Maybe."

I fire a webline from my wrist (Right hand _again_, damn it!) and turn slightly to glare at him as I tug down on it. I don't think he sees it.

"Tell you what, _you_ pick up the supervillain…"

As it turns out, I needlessly used my wrist, as a flying disk more famous than the Catholic faith whirls between us, hacking straight through both Jackhammer's ankles, the harmonized angry bumblebee swam sound of multiple repulsor blasts( ™ ) obliterating the right shoulder and what's left of the arms to send him crashing to the curb on his back.

"It's about frigin' time!" Wolverine calls out over the whine of Iron Man's thrusters, still trapped there by interlacing metalwork punched clean through him. They hiss out of existence under the clank of Tony's platform metal soles landing on the asphalt and a million little creaks as one of the planets most wealthy industrialists (or formerly wealthy now or whatever) bends over the eviscerated chest and gets his hands dirty, gauntlets glowing as he digs them deep into he tangled metal. Cap's beside him in an instant, yanking his shield out of the sidewalk in one fluid movement.

"See anything?"

Tony grunts.

Wolverine tosses his head back a little to shake off what's left of his mask, trying to avoid banging his head off Tony's armour clad arm.

"The hell're…"

Then he sees whatever they see in there. His eyes widen.

"Son of a…"

_//Yeah.//_

Tony's voice is distracted through the helmet filter, half not here as he moves his hands this way and that, a welding puppeteer. The rest of us gather round them like a group of concussed school children, aware we haven't had any sleep or gone to the bathroom since yesterday afternoon, heads full of the thick, off white, energy sapping, memory wiping, globule liquid of fatigue.

Finally two sets of shoulders slump in relief, Cap straightening up as Tony brings up a clenched fist, starting to get to work on the pinned Logan with the other.

"Okay." Jessica runs a hand through her negligee black hair. "What _was_ that exactly?"

"Big."

Cap hoists his belt up his waist a little, pouches jumping soundlessly. The thick leather of his flag red gauntlets crease at the wrists and mine itches in sympathy.

"We were tracking down Armadillo. Word was he'd gotten involved in weapons smuggling, getting by on work as a currier. Did some pretty high profile stuff."

"Like?"

Tony holds out his open left palm, not turning round as he guides a concentrated beam across Logan's arm to laser it free. What's in it is small, compact, made of rolls of steel and one large, now frozen timer. And to top it all off, a peeling biohazard sticker.

//_One dirty bomb, courtesy of __Phineas Mason._//

"The Tinkerer? He's still alive?"

Everyone looks at Jessica. I feel the need to step in, Spider people and sticking and togetherness and all…

"She's got a point, guys. Most of these weird old freaks have the decency to at least play possum for at least a couple of years."

Tony straightens up, stepping back to allow Logan up, the shreds o his yellow X Men jumpsuit waving in the wind as he massages his fading raw pink wrist.

_//Since the breakout he's been busy. Mostly running interference for some of these guys while they try hunting down cover and new contracts.//_

Cap takes over. Ask anyone and they'll tell you the most amazing thing about the Avengers isn't just the sheer scale and raw power, it's how like a seething organic machine they are, all diverse components with one single purpose, whether it's saving the world, carrying threads or even making coffee. Bet they could take Mt Rushmore apart in a day with buckets and spades. I wonder if we'll ever be talked about like that in the hushed, near reverent tones of cathedrals and restaurants and prison cells…

Oops, sentinel of liberty's talking, better pay attention…

"We thought if we found him, we'd blow the lid off the location of every major organization these felons would go looking for. I looked up some contacts in Washington, found they were mostly using second stringers to pull jobs so no one would think anything too important was going down. Drew all sorts of attention away from the more powerful score being carried out elsewhere."

Tony takes his cue.

_//Cap found out Armadillo had been hitting old S.H.I.E.L.D tech safe houses. He was working on something big that involved smuggling advanced radioactive germ warfare technology out to Seattle.//_

Cap finishes strapping his shield to his back.

"Turned out he wanted to meet up with one of the Tinkerer's workshops over there and sneak it into some sort of robot Manson was building. The buyer didn't know anything about it, but the Tinkerer got five million for smuggling it into the final product and shipping it back to New York. He'd made a break for it and wiped most of his hard rive before Tony exploited some old business connections and found out he'd been bunkered down in an old factory belonging to Justin Hammer, but since he postponed a business trip he was passing through for and joined me to help investigate, we were able to salvage enough to figure out someone from an alternate operation Manson set up in Siberia wanted to wipe out a large portion of the competition back home."

I unravel the last few hours. Jessica beats me to it.

"So you called us to take out Boomerang before he flipped a major kill switch for half the city."

Both nod.

"That's nice."

Luke shift's Boomerang's unconscious weight to revolve his shoulder a little.

"Dosen't explain why we went in blind though."

The cold air is thicker for the tension. Tony looses whatever little contest goes on between their shared glances and speaks up.

_//We…weren't 100 per cent sure how you'd react to it.//_

I lean casually against a parked minivan, ignoring how cold the metal is.

"Guys. We're pros."

OH MY GOD, WE ALMOST BLEW UP MANHATTEN!

"Yes. You are."

Figures. Cap gets to smile and look proud. Tony, with his tight faced Iron Man mask, gets to look like a faithless douche. Whatever. At least New York's still here. All my stuff is here. Which, as the others set off to greet the arriving (from a safe distance) authorities, reminds me…

"Hey boss, got any change?"

_//If all your spending your allowance on is comics, whatever shall I save up for your college fund?//_

"You can't. I'm a Space Phantom. We have no need for college."

In the past couple of months I've learned that while that armour is solid as a rock, any and all of Tony's real body language is in his eyes behind those face plate slits. Right now they're narrowed, so I better make my actual case.

"Gotta find a payphone…"

---

"Told you I could do it. No bruising, no swelling, no nothing."

"_You're being smug, Tiger. Karma dosen't like smug."_

"I've met Karma. Perfectly nice woman."

If you ignore the fact she body jacked me and took my flesh and blood for a spin against half the Fantastic Four to try and rescue her two kidnapped kids because, according to the media, I'd be too big of a crook for it to be out of character.

And there was a time that would have actually confused me.

MJ laughs on the other end.

_"Okay. Just don't push it. Come home in one piece, okay? No roughhousing with Norman or the Scorpion or whoever's wearing the Venom symbiote thing now."_

"Deal."

"_Promise?"_

"Pro…"

I don't get to finish as the noise of Damage Control equipment rumbles in the background. I make the mistake of glancing over my shoulder and get an eye full of a near naked Logan walking off to…wherever little naked Canadian mutants go during the Winter. The clean up operations going pretty well, Damage Control were coming off the graveyard shift apparently, but their doing well lifting crap out of the way considering they should be in bed instead of programming exoskeletons and running earth movers.

Luke's helping out with some heavy lifting, Jess is holding the hand of a lost five year old girl and guiding her towards her parents, and Steve and Tony are glaring at roaming S.H.I.E.L.D agents. Yeah, since the Savage Land we've all been even less inclined to trust Hill than we would. Guess a couple showing up for a pretty pedestrian nuclear robot is a little suspicious.

"_Sorry?"_

"Yeah, uh, go ahead honey, things kind of getting better out here. I believe someone also owes me fifty bucks for me not breaking a single bone in my body."

"_I just…worry about you, okay? I mean…"_

The line rattles with a sigh.

"Yeah?"

"_When it was the solo thing it was bad enough. Brock, Kraven Sr, and the Chameleon and all that crap Norman tried with you and Ben…"_

"Aw, honey…"

"_No. No it's okay. It's just…your a little high profile now…"  
_

I lean against the phone a little more. Wish she was here so I could put an arm around her or whatever the hypothetical manual says I should do, this is going to sound so hollow coming a hundred blocks away over the phone.

"Yeah. Yeah, there's been a lot of changes. A lot. And I'd be lying if I said I don't want to take some of them back, or just step into a time machine and take you back to all those sunny days back in the Coffee Bean, but I wouldn't trade any of this for the world. You're living in the palace you deserve to live in, and I am so lucky to have you in my life to come swinging back there to, and once I'm done with all this crap out here we're going to cuddle up on the bed and watch House or Bridget Jones's Diary together. Because even if I'm trying to make a difference by being in the Avengers or trying to make my old high school a place kids can actually learn in, I'm still the same person and so are you. And no matter what, I'll always come back to you. No matter what."

Silence.

"_I was going to say and it's gone to your head so much you've been trying a little too hard with the jokey looking cool thing, but okay."_

Oh, I am so going to show her…

"See you later, honey."

---

"Honey, I'm…"

Karma must not like that particular pop culture reference, because that's when it strikes. Ice. Windowsill. Precarious perch. Full human bodyweight. It's inevitable I'd slip and land on my leg. Hard. Incredible Hulk Leaping Up And Down On You With Golf Shoes hard.

And at the end of it my stupid wrist _still_ hurts.

---

"…given the rate of your metabolism, fairly close to Steve's, I'd suggest staying off it for about two days."

"The whole weekend?!"

Tony, slightly sweaty and dressed like he's about to go jogging, fresh out of the armour, gives me a smile as my voice speeds up in indignation. I can't figure out if it's meant to be sardonic or genuine.

"Say that again in that little Bart Simpson voice."

There was a time, back in high school, when I worshipped every word out of Tony Stark's mouth. Now I know better.

I moan, pulling the mask back on. After that it's back to pushing my weight into the rhythm of the futuristic crutch Tony put together for me. He insisted I take it off to check my head after he rushed me to the medical wing. Apart from my wrist (which still smarts, thanks or asking) he didn't find anything wrong. I am _so_ lucky to have a man of science poking around my naval and telling me I need a haircut.

"Hey, come on. We stopped an attempt to wipe out one of the largest cites on the planet, and the others called in the FF to take care of the Tinker's operation out in Siberia."

"That's not the worst part."

"At least you can catch up on your term papers?"

"You're really reaching."

"Then what?"

The doors hiss open, letting out the sterilised smell of the lab into the warm, peach sent of Jarvis's expert 24/7 care. He's been spending a lot of time around Aunt May, and after letting go of a problem I would have had at 15 I'm okay with that. MJ is with May. May has fifty bucks clutched in her hand. Both are smirking.

"That's the worst part."

I give them a glare from behind the mask as I hobble past.

"Not. One. Word."

---

I'm in our room, slumped in my desk chair and huddling into a turtleneck when she finds me, wrapped in that winter coat I brought her a week ago.

"Peter? You okay?"

I look up, about to admit that despite all this robot and wrist crap today I actually did manage to finish grading my papers, and despite the fact the fancy crutch is cool I almost wish the whole clone thing was still going on so I could transplant a new one on me, because I've actually made a little progress with this whole hero gig and I'd like to have more to show for it than The Parker Luck but at least she's here, when I realise she's locked the door and has started slipping the coat of to show me what she's wearing underneath.

It's a nurses outfit. Mostly.

Not a Black Cat suit. To her credit, Felecia always wore…_more_ than _that_. But right now I don't care.

She takes my hand, grinning, and I hardly register the little poisonous squeal it sends up my arm.

"Let's look at that wrist _together_, Tiger."

Sometimes I love to hate my life.

---

The point? Who needs the devil to come in and retcon everything to have an average ordinary everyday hard luck superhero?


End file.
